The Vivo 8 is the latest smartphone from BLU. It’s a $300 smartphone that looks to one up the Moto G5 Plus. For a limited time, the Vivo 8 will be available for $199 on Amazon.
The build quality of the Vivo 8 is topnotch. When you pick it up for the first time, you will immediately notice the smooth metal construction that is oh so cool to the touch. The sides are rounded ever so slightly to help it fit more comfortably in your hands as well. Taking a look around the device, we’ll find a dual SIM card slot with support for a microSD card for expandable storage on the left hand side. There’s a power/sleep button and volume rocker on the right hand side. The headphone jack is up top, micro USB port and speaker grilles on the bottom.
Up front, we’ll find a 5.5-inch 1080p LCD display that has good brightness and color vibrancy. The display is probably not going to wow you, especially if you’re coming from an older flagship smartphone from the likes of Samsung or LG. But it gets the job done. I would have liked to seen an AMOLED panel with slightly thinner bezels though. The fingerprint scanner works extremely well and it unlocks the phone fast. It’s on the front of the phone, underneath the display for easy access. And the physical button it is fused to feels nice and sturdy and tactile. This button is flanked by a back and overview capacitive touch navigation buttons.
The software is the most confusing area of this phone as it runs Android Nougat out of the box but it features a heavy skin on top of it that I’m just not a fan of. The notification drawer and quick settings are split up into two separate areas and there doesn’t appear to be an option to enable an app drawer so all of your apps will be placed on the home screen by default.
There are some gestures you can turn on and off to expand functionality. You could swipe down anywhere on the home screen to lower down the notification panel for example. There are also themes to choose from to spice this home screen up but I found myself quickly changing the launcher after setting up this smartphone. And I do want to note that out of the box, there will be several BLU applications pre-installed as well as some third party apps like Beacon Flashlight, Alarm Clock For Me, Z Camera, Z Gallery, Final Fantasy, and DFNDR. These are non BLU apps that can thankfully be removed.
As for performance, it’s very strong for the price of this handset. Under the hood lies a 2GHz Octa-Core processor with 4GB of RAM. I was able to take advantage of Nougat’s multi-tasking feature with very little lag. BLU has included a 13-megapixel Sony IMX 258 camera sensor with an f/2.0 aperture on the rear and there is a 16-megapixel front-facing camera sensor. As is the case with most smartphone camera sensors, the results will vary on lighting conditions, outdoor images with plenty of sunlight will look great and detail will be well-preserved, thanks to the high megapixel count. Low light photos can come out a little bit noisy. Overall, the sensor doesn’t have all the bells and whistles other flagships offer but for the price, I think it does a pretty fair job.
Arguably, the most underrated feature of this smartphone is the battery. The Vivo 8 features a 4,010 mAh battery with support for fast-charging. I’m disappointed to see the micro USB connector gets 2017 and every phone should have a USB-C port but I’m glad to be able to fill this phone up from empty to full in less than two hours. You really shouldn’t have a problem getting through a full day of moderate to heavy usage on this phone, which is something I can’t really say for a lot of smartphones today.
There are two speaker grilles on the bottom of the phone but audio is only blasted out via the right speaker. BLU is using Max’s Audio Technology to enhance the sound. It gets loud but clarity is so-so at higher volumes.
If you’re looking for a budget smartphone that values battery life above all else, you should seriously look into the Vivo 8. It’s quite the steal if you can pick it up for $200 from Amazon’s sale. However, if you’re on the fence about the Vivo 8 and Moto G5 Plus, you don’t need an exceptionally large battery to get you through the day and would value a device with a larger manufacturer like Motorola, who will continue to push updates to its devices for years to come, then I’m leaning towards the Moto G5 Plus.